Need some help with spacing. I have set up five trellises for muscadines. Each bar has two wires. Each bar is 24 inches wide. Do you think I can place one muscadine on each wire. The length of each trellis is about 16 ft. I have a two year supreme from ison’s and a two year lane from ison’s on separate trellises. I have ordered a sweet jenny and tara to add for the fall. I would like to order several more. Appreciate the help.
Thanks.
is each wire for a seperate cordon or are you training some other way.
I’m going to start with spacing that I see suggested by many sites. Vines are spaced 20’ apart and the rows are spaced so the equipment used between rows is adequate. My backyard vines are planted so they have 20’ of wire each but I reduced my rows to 7’ apart so I can plant more and I don’t have big equipment (mower only). Muscadines are vigorous growers and they will push side ward at least 2’ each so to make a long story short the 2’ spacing of your wires is going to cause an unmanageable mess. You can plant most anyway you want to and get fruit but down the road management is easier if the growth rate is considered in your plan.
How far apart are the poles? It looks like about 5’ which means the inner wires of adjacent rows are 3’ apart which as Bill mentions is far too close. You might want to take out every other row there if they are that close (hard to tell for sure by the picture).
You can space the vines within a row closer if you want to try multiple varieties. I have mine about 6’ apart and I have a bunch of varieties. The ones I like more I let spread out, the ones I like less I prune to little space.
Yes the plan is for each wire to have a cordon. Thanks.
Thanks. I should have asked for advice before I placed the poles down.
Scott,
The poles are about 5 ft apart. Thank you and Bill for your help. Fortunately the two that are growing that I have up and down the wire this year are the first and last pole. I will get rid of the 3 center poles. I will add one of them back to make sure they are at least 7-8 ft apart. Thanks again.
Dave
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For what it is worth I messed up my spacing on the first ones I planted. To me the row spacing is the most important consideration. I use a wide yard mower between my rows and left enough space to easily get through. I planted what will probably be my last one today and only had 15’ of length available so that is what I’m going with. Take good care of the vines and you can easily get 50 pounds per vine. That is a lot of fruit. If you haven’t already done so Isons has some of the best videos on growing muscadines and I now strickly follow their advice for the first two years.
I took the advice of Bill Ison to give each plant at least 240 square feet of growing room. This amounts to 15 X 16 spacing or 12 X 20 spacing. I have 12 plants in my backyard. With irrigation and abundant use of compost/manure, closer spacing could be used. My trellis holds the vines 6 feet from the ground so I can run my mower underneath the trellis.
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Hey Everybody…Just a couple of comments. Muscadines do vary in their vigor but are typically quite vigorous growers. As for fertilizer you may or may not need to fertilize after they are bearing age. Some of my more vigorous cultivars get no fertilizer at all. You can control their size somewhat by pruning…cutting the most vigorous ones the most. Supreme tends to overbear in my yard so it gets fewer bud spurs and still loads itself yearly. Would love to try some of the newest cultivars relwased by UGA. Concerning spacing all my muscadines are in one row and are usually dragging the ground by fall frosts. Spacing is about twelve feet apart between them in the row. i use the single cordon. Hope this helps a bit! Great growing
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I purchased a Paulk plant from Greg Ison a few weeks ago. He also mentioned another that will be available sometime in the next 2 years.
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Although 20’ might be the typical spacing I think closer spacing as you use would produce more pounds in the same length. Just an opinion and no information to back up my thoughts.